👋 Hello to the 1,121 subscribers of this newsletter! Thanks for reading. This newsletter is dedicated to helping you supercharge your productivity 365 days a year and be a better, happier you. But recent events prompted some reflection and writing I didn’t plan.
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But last week was missed due to the death of my uncle Joey, basically a second father to me. He gave me my first guitar when I was six, got me super passionate about motorcycles, and supported my decision to go into business when mostly everyone else (friends and family) told me I was crazy.
He also gave me a childhood name that stuck with me throughout the years amid my family—“Ragoo.” We both loved motorcycles since we knew how to twist throttles, but our styles differed drastically. Joey bled Harley-Davidson baggers like my dad, and I bled Ducati superbikes.
I come from a respectable family of primarily blue-collar workers regarding business. My uncle and my grandfather Charlie were the only close relatives who owned businesses.
Charlie, who turns 93 on Jan. 1, 2022, owned a restaurant/bar establishment throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s that was well known for its pizza and pasta. His success and reputation amid the community prompted my first influential glance at entrepreneurship.
The second glance arrived from my uncle, who opened Ferack's Auto Service on Dec. 1, 1986, and remained there through his passing at the age of 64 on Dec. 22, 2021. These glances created future visions and an eventual obsession for entrepreneurism, although I wouldn't act on them until my mid-30s.
Joey was in the middle of transitioning the business to the new owner, a well-respected employee and leaving cold Northeast Pennsylvania for South Carolina. His target date for retirement was February 1.
But that target was cut short due to cancer. I won't get into details, but Joey tried new medication, chemo, and eventually radiation. But, unfortunately, nothing worked or slowed that SOB of a disease.
With my uncle at the very end of a wedding and much wine :)
He kept his attitude lively, positive, and happy until his final hours—although he was clearly struggling. This theme presented itself throughout his life. Regardless of how hard he worked to build his business, Joey always remained smiling and cracking jokes (or "busting balls," as his closest friends know).
My grandfather endorses that same attitude style, which he did while working 60+ hours back in his restaurant days.
I realized only after beginning my business why my uncle and grandfather were always happy. Regardless of how hard they worked, they controlled their futures, from finances to the freedom of taking orders from bosses (although many business owners know clients are sometimes the bosses).
That taste of independence is what drove me to flee the UPS package car life and become a writer, my number one passion in life. After my uncle passed and I got some serious tears out after a few bottles of Shiraz, I reflected on my career.
My journey is patchy. My first tenure at UPS began when I was 18. I worked there from 1998 through 2003. But following a two-week cross-country trip via automobile with one of my dearest friends, I returned from vacation and quit to become a writer.
Many family members were pissed. The consensus was, “Why would a 23-year old quit a job that provided terrific benefits and a great retirement?”
I didn't see that angle (and still don’t). Instead, I saw another 25 years or so of not being who I wanted to be. My uncle agreed with my young decision to leave such a respected job because he had made a similar decision of jetting from a promising career to begin his own thing.
My college life was equally patchy. I was off and on through my first tenure at UPS, then finished a degree in literature while working as a journalist. I think I got my BA at 27 or something. I have no clue; I never visited the university to pick up that paper representation of my degree.
Things got weird in 2008.
Shortly after my grandfather, Joseph, passed (uncle Joey’s father), I took a nervous breakdown. While working as a journalist and finishing my literature degree, music and fiction writing were my other passions. I worked mostly nights as a reporter, wrote or played music until typically 5 a.m. or so, slept, went to classes, and repeated the process.
Things came crashing down around me, and my grandfather’s death surely aided in the breakdown.
“Aided?” Yep. Losing basically three days of my life helped ignite a new start in life.
That breakdown forced me to refocus. Shortly after, I focused on becoming a journalist in the motorcycle industry, something not too easy while living on the East Coast, and beginning a career as a freelance writer.
Plus, while I starved at the newspaper, I began studying the world of digital writing and marketing. I quickly realized the future was digital, especially in the news business. I quit the newspaper and reluctantly returned to UPS in 2008 as a driver to substitute for cash flow.
Within a few months of returning to UPS, I began studying self-improvement and productivity books while sending out dozens of story pitches to various motorcycle magazines.
Cycle World finally accepted a small piece in the summer of 2009 (ironically about using UPS driving habits for safer motorcycle riding), which opened some doors. I eventually began writing for Ultimate Motorcycling in the fall of 2009, then transitioned to the online editor, a position I held through October 2021, although I was doing other things.
I drove for UPS through 2015, when I quit yet again to join a digital marketing agency as head of content. Unfortunately, the typical agency life wasn't for me, mostly because of the in-house workforce and structured “9-5 lifestyle” that I had despised.
That led to launching my agency ContentMender in early 2017. And though the ebbs and flows of business can drive most insane, there's that personal freedom of choosing my own path, something that throttles the souls of most entrepreneurs.
This journey through life would not exist without input from a very few people. And one of those few was my uncle Joey, a top influencer in my life who told me to learn how to make a living from something I love doing.
Although his focus was fixing automobiles and my focus on writing and digital marketing, much of the goals are exactly the same.
Two that stick out are making customers/clients happy and having the choice to make your own decisions daily ultimately—an essential factor to the entrepreneurial lifestyle that drove me to take that proverbial plunge into business ownership.
I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions because I despise social fads and live daily with an optimistic look into the future. But Joey’s death came at such a time that reflection at the year’s end will become an annual thing for me.
Due to his influence, I’ll always strive to better myself and, more importantly, treat others with even more respect. I’ve never witnessed so many people visit a viewing service and seen so many men cry (I come from a community where “grown men” don’t cry…what bullshit that is).
The vast amount of visitors was a true testament to how Joey truly treated others. I also never heard him say a word about how much he did for others; he defined humbleness.
Although the world lost one of the great ones, I know Joey would bitch if I brooded too long. He’d also tell me to reflect on the happiness of some other events in 2021, such as my grandfather Charlie beating cancer after chemo and my niece undergoing a successful heart rebuild at only five days old.
Amid the worst, from COVID to losing my uncle, miracles did happen.
So RIP Joey, and onwards to smiles and as much joy as life can provide in 2022 (and a big ole finger to that dreaded C word).
Happy New Year’s to my Substack family, and thanks for reading.